The role of prior task experience in temporal misestimation

The effect of experience with a preceding task on the accuracy of predictions of duration was examined in three experiments, where two tasks comprising similar or different mental operators were performed consecutively. Results supported an anchoring account of misestimation, which states that misestimation occurs because predictions are anchored to the duration of the preceding task. Preceding performance of a longer task led to overestimation on a shorter task with similar mental operators (Experiment 1), whereas preceding performance of a shorter task comprising similar or different mental operators led to underestimation on a longer task (Experiments 1 to 3). Contrary to the planning fallacy account (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), these findings indicate that preceding task performance is considered when predicting duration, but that using such information does not necessarily improve accuracy.     

Inferring task performance and confidence from displays of eye movements

Eye movements reveal what is at the center of people's attention, which is assumed to coincide with what they are thinking about. Eye-movement displays (visualizations of a person's fixations superimposed onto the stimulus, for example, as dots or circles) might provide useful information for diagnosing that person's performance. However, making inferences about a person's task performance based on eye-movement displays requires substantial interpretation. Using graph-comprehension tasks, we investigated to what extent observers (N = 46) could make accurate inferences about a performer's multiple-choice task performance (i.e., chosen answer), confidence, and competence from displays of that person's eye movements. Observers' accuracy when judging which answer the performer chose was above chance level and was higher for displays reflecting confident performance. Observers were also able to infer performers' confidence from the eye-movement displays; moreover, their own task performance and perceived similarity with the performer affected their judgments of the other's competence.     

The role of prior task experience in temporal misestimation

The effect of experience with a preceding task on the accuracy of predictions of duration was examined in three experiments, where two tasks comprising similar or different mental operators were performed consecutively. Results supported an anchoring account of misestimation, which states that misestimation occurs because predictions are anchored to the duration of the preceding task. Preceding performance of a longer task led to overestimation on a shorter task with similar mental operators (Experiment 1), whereas preceding performance of a shorter task comprising similar or different mental operators led to underestimation on a longer task (Experiments 1 to 3). Contrary to the planning fallacy account (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), these findings indicate that preceding task performance is considered when predicting duration, but that using such information does not necessarily improve accuracy.     

Self-evaluation maintenance and the perception of friends and strangers

A self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model was used to make predictions about the positivity of perception of the performance of friends and strangers. The model predicts that when the target of perception is close (i.e., a friend) the target's performance should be perceived more positively on dimensions of low personal relevance (to the perceiver) and less positively on dimensions of high personal relevance. If the target is psychologically distant (i.e., a stranger), this tendency should be attenuated. Thirty-four female subjects were given positive and negative feedback on a social sensitivity and an esthetic judgment task. One task had greater relevance for some subjects and the other task had greater relevance for the remaining subjects. Subjects rated their perception of a friend's and a stranger's performance on these tasks. The patterning of positivity in perception conformed to the pattern predicted by the SEM model. Subjects' awareness of their behavior as well as individual differences in self-esteem and repression-sensitization were also examined and discussed.     

The impact of age on useful visual field deterioration and risk evaluation in a simulated driving task

The primary goal of this study is to evaluate whether the driver can estimate his performance and the deterioration of his state of alertness during a simulated driving task. The second goal is to study the relation between useful visual field (UVF) deterioration and the capacity to estimate performance in a visual task and the decrease of level of alertness as a function of age. In our experiment, two groups of subjects: 10 drivers between 21 and 34 years old and nine drivers between 46 and 57 years old were required to follow a vehicle in a simulated road traffic situation for 2 hours. In addition, the driver had to detect the change of colour of a signal located in the central part of his visual field or a peripheral signal appeared on the rear light of one of the vehicles in the traffic. The analysis of data collected during this visual task confirms that UVF deteriorates with the duration of the driving task and with the driver's age. The analysis of subjective data related to the state of alertness highlights an effect both of age and of the moment when this self-evaluation was carried out. However, self-evaluation of the subject's performance does not depend on driver's age. Finally, the study shows that the correlation between objective data (performance of visual task) and subjective data (state of drowsiness and self-evaluation of performance of the visual task) is low, and the implications with regard to road safety are discussed.     

室内照度对认知加工的影响:主观情绪和警觉性的中介作用

本研究采用单因素被试间设计,考察了白天室内照度(300 lx vs 1200 lx,眼位水平)对认知加工的影响及主观情绪和警觉性在照度水平与认知加工间的中介效应。结果发现:(1)被试在高照度照明条件下的认知加工绩效(Go/No-go,2-Back)明显好于低照度照明;(2)高照度照明对积极情绪和主观警觉性具有显著的正向影响;(3)警觉性在照度水平对Go/No-go任务的影响中起着完全中介作用,情绪的中介作用不显著。这表明警觉性在室内照度与部分认知加工间扮演着重要的"桥梁"作用。     

Effect of Self- and Group Efficacy on Group Performance in a Mixed-Motive Situation

The effect of self- and group efficacy on the performance of three-person (N = 26) and seven-person (N = 28) groups on a mixed-motive investment task was investigated. The correlations between group efficacy for making money and the actual amount of money made by the groups were positive and significant. The relation between group efficacy and the group's performance was reciprocal. The results also indicated that members of three-person groups had significantly higher perceptions of group efficacy than members of seven-person groups even though they faced the identical mixed-motive investment task. The correlations between group efficacy and the group's performance were significantly higher than the correlations between aggregated values of self-efficacy for individual performance and the group's performance. Finally, multiple regression analyses showed that self-efficacy for individual performance had a negative effect on the group's performance.     

Feeling Better But Doing Worse: Effects of Facebook Self-Presentation on Implicit Self-Esteem and Cognitive Task Performance

This study uses self-affirmation theory to draw predictions about the effect of Facebook profile self-presentation on two psychological outcomes: users' state self-esteem and their performance in a cognitive task. In an experimental procedure, participants were randomly assigned to examine either their own profiles, which tend to highlight social connectedness and treasured aspects of the self, or a stranger's profile. Afterward, participants reported their self-esteem using an implicit measure that is immune to reporting biases, and completed a serial subtraction task. Results show that a brief exposure to one's own profile raised state self-esteem, but that it hampered performance in a subsequent cognitive task by decreasing the motivation to perform well. The results advance the emerging literature on the effects of online self-presentation and also provide a theoretical contribution to self-affirmation theory.     

The effects of funny and serious task content and expectations of fun versus importance on children's cognitive performance

This study investigated how children's performance on a cognitive task was influenced by funny and serious task content, and by fun or important instructions. Eighty‐four children in Grades 1 and 5 performed two versions of a paired‐associates word‐learning task, which paired nonsense words with novel definitions and illustrations. All children completed a version in which the definitions and illustrations were funny, and a version in which they were not, with either fun or important instructions. Results revealed significantly better performance on the funny than on the serious version, but only when the funny version was presented first. There were no significant effects of task instructions. The findings confirm that making children's cognitive tasks funnier can enhance task performance. Although there were no effects of expectations as created by task instructions, the enhancing effect of funny content was influenced by children's expectations as created by their prior experience with the task.     

Narcissism,confidence, and risk attitude

The present research addresses whether narcissists are more overconfident than others and whether this overconfidence leads to deficits in decision making. In Study 1, narcissism predicted overconfidence. This was attributable to narcissists' greater confidence despite no greater accuracy. In Study 2, participants were offered fair bets on their answers. Narcissists lost significantly more points in this betting task than non‐narcissists, due both to their greater overconfidence and greater willingness to bet. Finally, in Study 3, narcissists' predictions of future performance were based on performance expectations rather than actual performance. This research extends the literature on betting on knowledge to the important personality dimension of narcissism. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of task difficulty and affect activation level in the use of affect as information

The current research examined task difficulty and affect activation level as factors that determine the relevance of affect as information in a performance context. Participants viewed a series of pictures designed to elicit an affective state that was high or low in activation and positive or negative in valence. They completed an easy or difficult anagram task and then rated their satisfaction with their performance. Analyses revealed that low activation affect was used as information for judging one's performance on the difficult task and high activation affect was used as information for judging one's performance on the easy task. In these cases, the valence of participants' affect influenced their judgments about their performance, such that positive affect resulted in greater satisfaction. These findings suggest that affective states with activation levels that match one's typical level of energy after a particular task are seen as more relevant for judging one's performance.     

Memory awareness disruptions in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: comparison of multiple awareness types for verbal and visuospatial material

Successful memory is normally accompanied by explicit awareness of retrieval and confidence in the accuracy of the retrieval product. Prior findings suggest that these features of metamemory can be dissociated from retrieval accuracy in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI). However, the literature on this question contains variable and conflicting results, likely because of differences in experimental conditions. We sought to systematically evaluate memory awareness disruptions in aMCI using multiple measures and stimulus formats within the same individuals. Memory awareness was tested with global predictions and postdictions, judgments of learning, confidence level ratings, and modified feeling-of-knowing ratings in tasks of visuospatial and verbal memory. These tests were administered to 14 individuals with aMCI and 15 healthy, age-matched controls. Memory awareness accuracy was calculated as the correspondence between subjective judgments and memory performance.Individuals with aMCI demonstrated impaired global and trial-level retrospective task awareness for visuospatial and verbal stimuli. Additionally, modified feeling-of-knowing awareness was impaired selectively for verbal stimuli. Statistical effect sizes for global awareness impairments were comparable to impairments in several objective neuropsychological memory assessments.Memory awareness (metamemory) disruptions in aMCI were most evident for a subset of subjective judgment types and task input modalities. These findings advance understanding of the nature of memory impairments in aMCI and support the utility of incorporating memory awareness testing to better characterize memory integrity in older adults.     

Measuring consciousness: task accuracy and awareness as sigmoid functions of stimulus duration

When consciousness is examined using subjective ratings, the extent to which processing is conscious or unconscious is often estimated by calculating task performance at the subjective threshold or by calculating the correlation between accuracy and awareness. However, both these methods have certain limitations. In the present article, we propose describing task accuracy and awareness as functions of stimulus intensity (thus obtaining an accuracy and an awareness curve) as suggested by Koch and Preuschoff (2007). The estimated lag between the curves describes how much stimulus intensity must increase for awareness to change proportionally as much as accuracy and the slopes of the curves are used to assess how fast accuracy and awareness increases and whether awareness is dichotomous. The method is successfully employed to assess consciousness characteristics on data from four different awareness scales.     

Confidence in Personal Preferences

The first aim of this study was to test the self‐consistency model (SCM) of subjective confidence as it applies to personal preferences. According to SCM, participants presented with a two‐alternative forced‐choice (2AFC) item draw a small sample of representations of the item. Their confidence reflects the extent to which the choice is representative of the population of representations associated with the item, and the likelihood of making that choice on subsequent occasions. The second aim was to use confidence judgment as a clue to the dynamics of online preference construction. Participants were presented with 2AFC items measuring everyday personal preferences. The task was presented five times. In line with SCM, (i) when participants changed their preferences across presentations, they were systematically more confident when they made their more frequent choice; (ii) confidence in a choice in the item's first presentation predicted the likelihood of repeating that choice in subsequent presentations; (iii) despite the idiosyncratic nature of personal preferences, confidence was higher for consensual than for nonconsensual preferences; (iv) when participants predicted the preferences of others, they were also more confident when their predictions agreed with those of others; and (v) the confidence/accuracy correlation for predictions was positive for consensually correct but negative for consensually wrong predictions. These results suggest that confidence in preferences can help separate between the stable and variable contributions to preference construction in terms of the population of representations available in memory and the representations that are accessible at the time of preference solicitation, respectively. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of control deprivation on effort expenditure and accuracy performance

Theoretical positions lead to diverging predictions regarding the impact of control deprivation on subsequent performance. Learned helplessness research suggests that control deprivation impairs subsequent performance. This effect can be attributed either to a decrease in motivation or to a decrease in attentional resources. In contrast, control motivation hypothesis predicts that control deprivation increases careful processing of incoming information, and thus accuracy performance, unless the task is perceived as ego‐threatening. In order to test these diverging predictions against each other, participants were exposed to zero, one, two, four, six or eight unsolvable (vs. solvable) problems and then asked to complete two letter cancellation tasks. This task allowed independent evaluation of effort expenditure (i.e., the number of letters scanned) and accuracy performance (i.e., percentage of letters correctly marked). Overall, the results were consistent with the predictions of the cognitive explanations of learned helplessness deficit as control deprivation at high levels reduced accuracy performance but not effort expenditure. Unexpectedly, effort expenditure was affected by problem solving activity. These results suggest that control deprivation could heighten motivation and, at the same time, deplete cognitive resources. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Younger and older adults weigh multiple cues in a similar manner to generate judgments of learning

One’s memory for past test performance (MPT) is a key piece of information individuals use when deciding how to restudy material. We used a multi-trial recognition memory task to examine adult age differences in the influence of MPT (measured by actual Trial 1 memory accuracy and subjective confidence judgments, CJs) along with Trial 1 judgments of learning (JOLs), objective and participant-estimated recognition fluencies, and Trial 2 study time on Trial 2 JOLs. We found evidence of simultaneous and independent influences of multiple objective and subjective (i.e., metacognitive) cues on Trial 2 JOLs, and these relationships were highly similar for younger and older adults. Individual differences in Trial 1 recognition accuracy and CJs on Trial 2 JOLs indicate that individuals may vary in the degree to which they rely on each MPT cue when assessing subsequent memory confidence. Aging appears to spare the ability to access multiple cues when making JOLs.     

The Effects of Choice and Incentives on the Overestimation of Future Performance

Two studies were designed to investigate factors hypothesized to influence the accuracy of performance-related statements (both performance predictions and self-set goals). In Experiment 1, subjects were either allowed to choose a specific version of the performance task or were assigned a version of the task prior to making performance-related statements. In Experiment 2, monetary incentives were manipulated prior to requests for either estimates or self-set goals. Results indicate significant sex-by-choice and sex-by-incentives interactions on both predictions and goals. In general, males responded to incentives and choice by becoming more extreme in their performance predictions and goals. However, females did not respond to incentives and choice as would be predicted by general principles such as "wishful thinking" (Slovic, 1966) and "illusion of control" (Langer, 1975). These results are discussed in the context of gender research in achievement settings and organizational theories of motivation.     

Performance prediction in young children: Effects of skill,metacognition and wishful thinking

Research on children's performance expectations has repeatedly shown that preschoolers and kindergarten children typically overestimate their own performance across a wide range of contexts. In this study, two experiments were carried out with 4- and 6-year-old children to assess the impact of familiarity with the task, memory monitoring, and wishful thinking on children's performance predictions. Results showed that overpredictions were rather due to wishful thinking than to poor metacognition, and that overpredictions were more frequent in unfamiliar as compared to familiar task settings.     

Fathers' and mothers' perceptions of their preschool children's emergent literacy

This study examined parent's perceptions of their preschool children's emergent literacy. Of particular interest was the relationship of several children's characteristics (age, gender, and achievement) to the predictions of fathers and mothers. Fathers and mothers of 3- and 4-year-old boys and girls were asked to predict their children's performances on six measures of emergent literacy: letter naming, auditory discrimination, context-dependent word recognition, storybook orientation, writing, and interest. In comparing these predictions with children's actual performances, both fathers and mothers were found to significantly overestimate their children's performances on over half of the measures. Parents made appropriate differentiations for the age of the child. Furthermore, the accuracy of predictions did not differ significantly between parents of boys and girls. On most measures, a higher degree of association was found between the predictions of mother and father than between either parent's prediction and child's performance.     

The accuracy–confidence relationship in an eyewitness task: anxiety as a modifier

The present study investigated the role of anxiety as a moderator of the relationship between accuracy and confidence in an eyewitness recall task. Participants selected as high or low anxious on a test anxiety scale viewed a video clip of a crime. One week later they answered verbally a series of questions about the video, rating their confidence in each answer. Observers were shown a video-recording of each participant's test session and rated how confident they appeared overall. It was argued that people high in test anxiety would appraise their performance to a greater degree than low-anxious people, resulting in a significant correlation between accuracy and subjective confidence for high-anxious but not for low-anxious participants. The results obtained supported this hypothesis, and found similar relationships between accuracy and perceived confidence. Highly anxious participants expressed less overall confidence in their answers than low anxious participants. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.